English Speaking Practice. Brainstormings, Games, Activities, Warmers and Fillers to learn and practice English Fluency
English Speaking Practice
English Speaking Practice
English Speaking Practice with warmers and fillers designed to be short, designed to last no more than 10 minutes.
Here are 15 English Speaking Practice:
3 picture story
You will need a photo of an interesting couple, a photo of an interesting location, and a strange piece of realia. Students must build a story from these items. First show them the couple. Elicit ideas about their relationship, their careers, who loves whom the most, how long they have been together, etc. Once you have a pretty full picture, introduce the piece of realia (for example: a tennis racket), elicit how this is involved in the story, who used it and the result that it had upon the couple. Finally, show the class the location picture and elicit a suitable conclusion to the story. Ask students to summarize the entire story. The student will surprise you with how inventive they are.
This can be done in small groups, as a whole class and with different pictures.
3 things in common
Students work in pairs to find out three things they have in common with each other – but not things like ‘We both live in Italy’, as these things are too obvious. You can extend this or make it more specific by giving them a topic (family) and they have to find three things in common. Try to put students together who don’t normally talk to each other.
Angry greetings
Elicit some greetings to the board e.g. how are you, what’s your name, nice to meet you, how have you been, it’s been a long time since I last saw you, etc. Tell your students they are going to go around and greet each other as if they are meeting for the first time. Decide whether the students are meeting a co-worker, a friend’s friend, their boyfriend/girlfriend’s mother, etc. Have them mingle and meet each other. Then tell your students that they are meeting their friend for lunch but they just found out their friend kissed their boyfriend/ girlfriend and they are very angry about this. Continue with other scenarios, using similar language but changing the body language and tone of voice depending on situation. Some other example situations include: the person they are meeting smells really bad, you’ve met the person before but cant remember his/her name, the person you are meeting is really famous and you are star struck, you are meeting a small child, the person you are meeting just had a parent pass away, etc.
Telephone
Divide the students into teams and line them up. Show the first person in each line a word, phrase or sentence, depending on ability. The students whisper the word, phrase or sentence
to the next student who then whispers it to the next student and so on. The first team to produce the word, phrase or sentence gets point (the last person either shouts it out or writes it on the board).
Dice discussions
Write numbers 2 – 12 on the board and get students to suggest topics they like to talk about.
Write one topic next to each number. Students take it in turns to roll the dice, and talk for a preagreed time limit on the subject that corresponds to the number rolled.
Disco / Library
The goal is for students to transmit a message to one another. Split the students into two groups. Put one group in a row at one end of the room, the other group in a row on the other
side of the room. Pair the students together so one person is a speaker and one is a listener.
Give one row white boards (they are the ‘listeners’) and one row a slip of paper with a message on it (they are the ‘speakers’). Decide if you want your students to be at the disco or the library (‘disco’ – the teacher plays loud music and students must shout to each other; ‘library’ – the students must mouth words to each other.). The first person to write down the message correctly gets a point for their pair. Continue with a new message and switch the listeners and speakers.
I’d rather…
Tell students they are going to have to tell their partner their preference to the sentences you write on the board. Write funny sentences on the board, e.g. ‘I’d rather eat a cockroach’ and ‘I’d rather eat a spider’. Students talk amongst themselves about which they would rather do. Other examples are: ‘I think of myself as the ocean’ or ‘I think of myself as a mountain’; ‘I’d rather be deaf’ or ‘I’d rather be blind’, etc
Magic circle
Students stand in a circle. One person has a ball and makes a statement e.g. ‘my name is …’ or ‘I like … but I don’t like …’ then tosses the ball to another student who also makes a statement and so on. This can be used often at the beginning or end of class to remember or reflect on what students have been learning. It is also a fun way to see students’ language skills develop as they gain more ability.
English Speaking Practice
Music chart discussion
Connected to the theme of music, a great piece of material to have at hand for your teenage groups is the recent top 20 music singles charts. Hand out a copy to each group of three or four students & get them chatting at the beginning of a lesson. You could set some guidelines for discussion e.g. ‘What kind of music is most popular this week?’, ‘how long do you think this song will be at number one?’, ‘which songs are going to move up the charts or down the charts?’ etc.
Spin the bottle
Take some skittles/bowling pins to class and put students into 3 teams. Sit them in 3 circles. One student spins the bottle. Whoever the bottle points to can ask a question or practice the vocabulary / grammar point. E.g. ‘I am thinking of an animal beginning with T’ – the rest of the group has to guess the answer. They can keep a tally of correct answers for points if you want it competitive. You can also vary this activity and have the bottle spinner ask a question to whom ever it points to. Then the student who answers can spin the bottle and ask a question to the next person.
Story telling
A good game for revising past simple tense. Sit the students in a circle on the floor. Tell them that they are going to tell a story. The story will be told one word at a time, with the students taking it in turns to say a word. You start e.g. ‘Yesterday’. The next student then says a word to
continue the story e.g. ‘I’. The next student says a word and continues the story.
Talk for a minute
Put the class into two rows facing each other. Write a topic on the board e.g. sport. The pairs have to talk toughest for a minute about sport e.g. ‘What’s your favourite sport?’, ‘how often do you play?’, ‘Where do you play?’. After a minute say stop. Ask each student to move down one person to their left so they are facing another student (the person on the end goes to the opposite end). Give them a new topic and repeat the procedure. Continue with more topics.
English Speaking Practice
Talk or die
Elicit several topics to the board e.g. hobbies, school, sports, family, etc. Stand your students in a circle, you standing in the middle. Point a marker at a student and call out a topic. That student must talk continuously without stuttering or stopping on that topic until you point the marker at another student and call out a different topic. If a student stops or cannot speak on the topic, he / she dies and is out of the game. Continue until one student is left. They are the winner. This can be done in smaller groups.
That’s a lie!
Tell the students that they will be telling a true story to their friends but they will include one lie. Give the students time to think about their story (they can make notes but shouldn’t write the whole story) because they should make it believable. In pairs or small groups, one student tells his / her story. The other students try to guess the lie from the story. Give time for all the students to tell their stories. Switch up the groups and have the students retell the same story while new students try to guess the lie. To debrief, ask the students if they did a better job telling the story the second time. Ask them if they were better liars the second time. Etc
To be or not to be
Split the class into two rows. Write a controversial statement on the board e.g. boys are better at school than girls, woman should not have jobs outside the house. Tell one row they must agree with the statement and the other row must disagree with the statement. The two sides then debate with each other. You can make this a less structured activity where all students are talking with each other at once or a team vs. team structured activity where sides take turns talking and rebutting.
Weekend
Elicit 5 words from each student to describe their weekend. A different student tells class or small groups what the other did. The original student verifies the story.
English Speaking Practice
English Speaking Practice. Also check out these English games and activities
